What’s it like to be too smart for friends? Noah Baumbach‘s films have often addressed that question in one way or another — though Greenberg stands as perhaps the best example of such a query, both Kicking and Screaming and Margot At the Wedding wonder about it, too — but his most recent outing, the thoroughly charming Mistress...

Dawn Wiener is dead, long live Dawn Wiener! Todd Solondz‘s second feature film, Welcome to the Dollhouse, is hailed as the filmmaker’s big breakthrough — a bold, gross, weird and uncomfortably honest look at one awkward tween’s coming-of-age in nineties New Jersey. The film starred Heather Matarazzo as Dawn “Wiener Dog” Wiener, an...

Eden is a film about passion, at least at first. It’s about youth and the thrill of finding community in art, the music that takes over your soul. It’s about dancing, drugs, and sex. It’s Almost Famous and Finding Llewyn Davis, sort of. By the time it ends it’s covered over...

Simon Axler (Al Pacino) is prone to theatrics, and while it would be easy to blame his life-long career as a reasonably well-regarded actor for such a personality defect (Simon certainly loves to do that), the most likely culprit for his over-the-top acting out is that he’s a selfish bastard who...

The entire planet was palled by a cratering sadness late last night when it was announced by Variety that Greta Gerwig, Queen of Indie Darlings, had signed on to produce, write and star in CBS’s spin-off sitcom How I Met Your Dad. Her most ardent fans are furious that they’ll be...

The experiment seems healthy enough. Take 10 incredible performers from 2013, get random lines of dialogue from 10 other creatives, snag some shoot time with Janusz Kaminski and deliver something poetic for the end of the year. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the results of The New York Times Magazine “Making a...

No, this piece will not be styled as an actual love letter to Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s charmer, due to hit cinephile-near-you shelves later this week with its Criterion Collection release, but it will be an intense appreciation of the film. (Consider this a warning if, for...

It starts like any other love story – there is dancing and music and laughter and secrets and plans – but no matter how it might look at first blush, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha isn’t a film about a pair of twentysomethings falling in and out of love in New York...

Frances Ha is new territory for writer-director Noah Baumbach. To briefly pigeonhole him as a filmmaker, he’s not the type of storyteller we expect to show someone joyously running down the street cued to David Bowie’s “Modern Love.” We’d expect to see a character breaking down talking about how much they hate...

Surely, we’ve heard this one before – Greta Gerwig stars as a confused twentysomething, shuffling her way through life in big, bad New York City, along with her coterie of cool pals, all looking for some kind of life-changing breakthrough – but Noah Baumbach‘s Frances Ha looks markedly different from its genre brethren, if only because...

Indie auteur Noah Baumbach‘s latest film, the Greta Gerwig-starring Frances Ha, centers on Gerwig’s shiftless New Yorker Frances, a twentysomething still trying to figure it (or anything) out. Of course, being a hip NYC gal, Frances’ life is populated with all sorts of nifty hipsters, including (apparently) dudes named “Patch.” In this new...

Frances Ha is a Noah Baumbach film without bitterness. This is perhaps unexpected, given the man’s track record. Greenberg is practically an essay on acerbity, while The Squid and the Whale traffics in plenty of divorce-inspired acrimony. That doesn’t mean that his prior work is somehow one-dimensional or excessively pessimistic,...

Perhaps we were spoiled with last year’s Midnight in Paris, auteur Woody Allen‘s return to (delightful) form after a few years of basically forgettable, minor efforts like Whatever Works, Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream, and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Suffice to say, Allen’s next cinematic trip to a classic,...

“Being single builds character.” At least that’s what Lola Versus‘s ostensible heroine (Greta Gerwig) wants to believe as she stumbles and shuffles through life post-break-up and pre-thirtieth birthday in Daryl Wein‘s girl-on-the verge hipster rom-com, so it’s too bad that it takes her too long to form what one would...

Writer/director Whit Stillman‘s name hasn’t graced the big screen since his slightly divisive The Last Days of Disco hit thirteen years ago. That’s quite a long time between features, but if it takes Stillman that amount of time to write the dialogue he’s regarded for, then the wait is more than worth any...

Greta Gerwig is no stranger to screenwriting, as already in her young career she’s had writing credits on indie standouts like Nights and Weekends and Hannah Takes the Stairs. But, most recently, she’s been focusing more heavily on acting, as she’s been getting a string of roles in increasingly more...

It’s deeply distressing to see an actress such as Greta Gerwig, whose work I enjoy so immensely since she popped up in Hannah Takes the Stairs, end up in so many films that I didn’t like. Namely 2011’s The Dish & The Spoon and Arthur. That said, it sure won’t stop...

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly collection of movie news and editorial links that will certainly be living long and prospering. Both because it is what our super hip Commander-in-Chief commands of us and because of you, the faithful reader. We begin this evening with a shot...

Within mere seconds, it’s obvious that writer-director-producer Whit Stillman’s first film in over a decade is going to have a spirit all of its own – after all, Damsels in Distress opens with a bright pink Sony Pictures Classic logo, a change-up from their classic blue. The message is clear...